Green turn Gold in Slaughter of Nuggets – Game 3 Thoughts

By KC Downey in Celtics ⋅ November 8, 2007 at 8:06pm ⋅ Post a comment

The Green sure looked golden Wednesday night when the C’s played the Denver Nuggets. The Nuggets are stacked with 2 former No. 1 draft choices (Allen Iverson, Kenyon Martin) and 2 former No. 2/3 draft choices (Marcus Camby, Carmelo Anthony). Yet, the Celtics totally dominated the Nuggets from the get-go…and all that talent left the Nuggets down 77-38 (39 points!) at halftime.

From that point, the Celtics coasted to victory. The special thing about this game is that we finally saw the Big Three each score at least 20 points. Garnett (23 points, 13 rebounds), Allen (22 points), and Pierce (26 points), have all clicked at the same time already. It seems whenever one of them has a bad game, the other 2 play that much better. So what happens when all three play well at once? Well…you get the Celtics up by 39 at halftime. At the half, Garnett already had a double-double and Pierce already had 20 points.

Can you ever remember a more dominant performance against a talented Western Conference team (like the Nuggets) by the Celtics? I know this isn’t exactly the same, but this game brought back memories of the Celtics first playoff run in the 2000s. Pierce, Antoine, and Jim O’Brien’s boys went 5 games with the Philadelphia 76ers in the first round of the 2002 playoffs. In the deciding Game 5 (box score), the Celtics turned in an explosive performance, blowing the Sixers away in the 4th quarter to win 120-87. A much younger Pierce had 46 points (8-10 from 3-pt range) and Antoine chipped in 26 points and 9 rebounds.

Sure the C’s are hot, and they’re running up the score like they’re the Patriots. Sadly, all good things have to end sometime. Things could change due to defensive specialist James Posey’s back spasms injury. Doc Rivers said that Posey’s injury could keep him out for the upcoming games this weekend. The team could hurt a little with the loss of Posey, but the C’s did play Game 1 without him too and won easily over the Wizards. Will Posey’s absence be enough to cool down the Celtics? We will see…